Pastry Scraps
by Shyaway
Summary: Sweeney Todd drabbles. There will be gen, various pairings, pussy-cats and toast...
1. La Petite Mort

**Disclaimer: Not mine. Used without permission or remuneration but with as much love and respect as Sweeney has for his friends.**

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_La Petite Mort_

Late that evening, Mr Todd, having been sitting in silence as he always did, the stony paterfamilias, unexpectedly reached out, his fingertips brushing past her dangling curls, and curiously touched her neck.

Electricity, that new and dangerous thing, sparked through her; she couldn't quite repress her shiver of delight, for all that he never liked it when she showed what pleasure she took in him; she sat still, waiting, ready to take her lead from him as she did when they danced. Touching, she was certain, was a very good sign.

(He's thinking that one day, he'll cut just _there_.)


	2. Forget me nots

_**Forget-me-nots**_

There was something about her, he supposed; he couldn't pinpoint it, but there was _something_ that made him question her instead of throwing the stranger out, or down the chute, at once. It wasn't a scruple born from women not being his usual prey; he had come close enough to killing Mrs Lovett, more than once… Did he recognise her?

It came to him just as she asked if she didn't know him, just as he heard the Judge's voice on the stairs. It was the beggar he sometimes saw from his window.

No one would notice a missing beggar.


	3. The Madwoman on Fleet Street

For a request meme on LiveJournal: the request was Fogg, or Fogg/Lovett.

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_**The Madwoman of Fleet Street**_

It was dark, damp, and lonely in the asylum, and the cries of the inmates wore on his nerves - the screams of the new arrivals, the hysterics generated by the experimental treatments doctors liked to use his house for, and the eternal keening the mad girls kept up. In the pie shop, there was warmth, conviviality, and Mrs Lovett.

He had started to come here on the recommendation of the men who fetched in his patients; they had raved about the pies. He came back because of the pie-maker.

She had the most exquisite hair, unlike anything he had seen on his wards. Russet corkscrew curls, shining with health and prosperity now, tumbling over each other in a careless arrangement that wasn't quite ladylike, that invited a man to take out the hairpins one by one until that marvellous hair was completely exposed, loose and _au naturel_, to his hands and to his gaze. He liked to keep her talking.

"The ward of a _judge_? Ridiculous what those lunatics think!" Her eyes tracked upwards for a moment, to the upper floor of her shop, and then back to him. She smiled, fascinating. "I suppose her friends don't want her back? She's with you for life?"

"I suppose so, Mrs Lovett. My poor charges are too much for their friends in their sad afflictions. I keep them safe from the outside world."

Perhaps he might bring _her_ in. He detected a certain instability in her that would suffice as a reason. Indeed, such a thing always manifested itself eventually in his patients, no matter how virulently they protested their sanity on first being brought to the asylum.

"Is the barber still at work at this hour?" he inquired of her, unwilling to leave the vicinity of the charming Mrs Lovett just yet and feeling that he may as well use his time away from the asylum efficiently.

"Mr Todd - oh, no, I shouldn't think so. You go back to your asylum and watch over those poor girls. Make sure no one comes to take them away." She winked at him and re-entered her shop.

If he could bring her in, he would keep her and that unique hair in a cell alone. All the better to watch over her.

--

When she sees him coming, she reaches for the carving knife. Presumptuous creature, not seeing where he isn't wanted - just wait until she tells her Mr Todd. He'll want to protect her, he will.

At least Mr Fogg had told her where Johanna was. An asylum was probably the best place for her (_like mother, like daughter_) and now she could trouble her father no more. All traces of that unfortunate first marriage erased, clearing the way for another. How gratifying.


End file.
